Taiwan’s Insularity

    In 1968, an electronics industry leader and his U.S. corporate president visited Taipei to see whether this was the right location for their company’s first Asian factory. In the end, however, they opted for Singapore. Why not Taipei? The entrepreneur explained to me that Taipei seemed somehow closed off, that people just did not know what was happening around the world, and that the general level of English proficiency was quite low. In other words, Taipei was not international enough.
     In 2002, Lonely Planet brought out an updated edition of its Taiwan guidebook. The author had clearly put little effort into the revision, as there was almost nothing about new developments in Taipei in it. But the author did provide an overall impression of Taiwan’s capital, which he described as one of the most unapproachable cities in Asia. In other words, Taipei seems isolated, barely connected with the outside world, and with a lower than average English fluency: not the kind of city where international travelers are going to feel at ease, let alone at home.
    Can it be? Thirty-five years have passed since 1968 and Taiwan is still closed off, still out of touch with the rest of the world?
    Yes, it’s true. Anyone who has traveled much can see immediately that Taiwan is comparatively insular. There are few foreign travelers at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport. The English on the street signs in the capital is an utter mess. Pick up a newspaper and you are finished with the international section in five minutes flat. The content of cable television news is a collective indictment of our self-centeredness: ten times as much coverage for a child who swallowed nails while playing than for Ethiopia’s starving millions; footage of a dog chewing betel nuts in Nantou dwarfs the Argentinean presidential election in importance; nude demonstrators at a G-8 summit fill up the television screen, without as much as a single commentary on their cause. 24 hours a day, the people of Taiwan are force-fed detailed images of loud-mouthed politicians, whose antics often escalate into scuffles and even brawls. Issues of international concern----war, the environment, poverty, famine, intellectual advances, sudden changes in the old order, latent crises----seem not to exist in Taiwan.
    “That’s absurd,” you may argue, “Taiwan is international:just look at the concentration of Starbucks in Taipei, the highest in the world. And what about the all-night convenience stores, on almost every street corner.” There are indeed ways in which our capital city seems cosmopolitan. Want to hear the hippest hip hop music and see the latest fashions? Taipei’s the place to be. Release dates for Hollywood movies are among the earliest in the world. Moreover, the yearly rhythm we beat out is international: we celebrate Valentine’s Day on February 14, hold a costume parade for Halloween in late October, and cook Thanksgiving turkey dinner in November. Come Christmas in December and the whole town turns out to sing and dance in City Hall Square. Even the Presidential Office gets in on the act on New Year’s Eve, setting off fireworks, popping champagne corks, and counting down the seconds to midnight, when you grab the nearest person for a celebratory kiss.
    Finally, the newly elected national government is now asking for English versions of all official documents. Civil servants must now undergo English testing. The entire population is studying the language! The final goal of all these efforts is to make English an official language. So who says Taiwan is closed off?

Who to Emulate?
    But what on earth is “internationalization”?
    If “modernization” means the introduction of new farming techniques used on the existing soil of traditional culture — such as democratic institutions, the scientific spirit, and industrial technology — for the benefit of a new philosophy of accommodation and a new lifestyle, and if “globalization” signals an unprecedented perforation of traditional ethnic and national borders as deep-rooted cultural institutions are now self-adjusting to the rhythm of modern technology and economy, then a nation’s cultural and social heritages—its laws, beliefs, morals, values— will all have to be redefined.
   Modernization is the holy grail of a great many developing nations, and globalization is rapidly becoming a reality. In the new order, developed nations are trying to capitalize on established advantages, while developing countries are faced with the danger of “becoming invisible” even as they ride the tide of opportunity.
    Where does the concept of “internationalization” fit in? It would seem to indicate becoming international, but what does that mean? Who is international and what are they like? In making English one of our official languages, are we trying to emulate England and the United States? Or India and the Philippines? Or Hong Kong and Singapore? When the government announces the adoption of a foreign language as a lingua franca, ...